|
on Social Norms and Social Capital |
| By: | Fogli, Alessandra; Veldkamp, Laura |
| Abstract: | Does the pattern of social connections between individuals matter for macroeconomic outcomes? If so, how does this effect operate and how big is it? Using network analysis tools, we explore how different social structures affect technology diffusion and thereby a country’s rate of technological progress. The network model also explains why societies with a high prevalence of contagious disease might evolve toward growth-inhibiting social institutions and how small initial differences can produce large divergence in incomes. Empirical work uses differences in the prevalence of diseases spread by human contact and the prevalence of other diseases as an instrument to identify an effect of social structure on technology diffusion. |
| Keywords: | development; disease; economic networks; growth; pathogens; social networks; technology diffusion |
| JEL: | E02 I1 O1 O33 |
| Date: | 2012–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9188&r=soc |
| By: | Delia Furtado; Nikolaos Theodoropoulos |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the role of ethnic networks in disability program take-up among working-age immigrants in the United States. We find that even when controlling for country of origin and area of residence fixed effects, immigrants residing amidst a large number of co-ethnics are more likely to receive disability payments when their ethnic groups have higher take-up rates. Although this pattern can be partially explained by cross-group differences in satisfying the work history or income and asset requirements of the disability programs, we also find that social norms and, to a lesser extent, information sharing play important roles. |
| Date: | 2012–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2012-23&r=soc |
| By: | Surajeet Chakravarty (Department of Economics, University of Exeter); Miguel A. Fonseca (Department of Economics, University of Exeter) |
| Abstract: | We study the role of social identity in determining the impact of social frag- mentation on public good provision using laboratory experiments. We nd that as long as there is some degree of social fragmentation, increasing it leads to lower public good provision. This is mainly because the share of those who contribute fully to the public good diminishes with social fragmentation, while the share of free-riders is unchanged, which suggests social identity preferences drive our result, as opposed to self-interest. Importantly, socially homogeneous groups do not generate the highest contributions: some social diversity is actually welfare-improving. Finally, social fragmentation is felt differently for visible minorities, whose contributions are higher than minority groups whose actions are not identiable. |
| Keywords: | Social Identity, Public Goods, Social Fragmentation, Experiments. |
| JEL: | C92 D02 D03 H41 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exe:wpaper:1207&r=soc |
| By: | Gerald Eisenkopf (Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany); Urs Fischbacher (Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany) |
| Abstract: | People do not like to delegate the distribution of favors. To explain this reluctance we disentangle reward motives in an experiment, in which an investor can directly transfer money to a trustee or delegate this decision to another investor. Varying the transfer values of investor and delegate, we find that the trustee’s rewards follow a rather simple pattern. In all situations, both investors are rewarded, but the person who ultimately decides gets a higher reward. Unlike studies on the punishment of delegated unkind decisions our results do not reveal sophisticated reward behavior that takes the responsibility of people into account. |
| Keywords: | Delegation, trust, reciprocity, intentions, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D63 |
| Date: | 2012–08–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:knz:dpteco:1219&r=soc |
| By: | Manuel Förster (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne & Université Catholique de Louvain - CORE); Michel Grabisch (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne - Paris School of Economics); Agnieszka Rusinowska (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne - Paris School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We study a stochastic model of influence where agents have yes-no inclinations on some issue, and opinions may change due to mutual influence among the agents. Each agent independently aggregates the opinions of the other agents and possibly herself. We study influence processes modelled by ordered weighted averaging operators. This allows to study situations where the influence process resembles a majority vote, which are not covered by the classical approach of weighted averaging aggregation. We provide an analysis of the speed of convergence and the probabilities of absoption by different terminal classes. We find a necessary and sufficient condition for convergence to consensus and characterize terminal states. Our results can also be used to understand more general situations, where ordered weighted averaging operators are only used to some extend. Furthermore, we apply our results to fuzzy linguistic quantifiers. |
| Keywords: | Social network, influence, convergence, speed of convergence, consensus, ordered weighted averaging operator, fuzzy linguistic quantifier. |
| JEL: | C7 D7 D85 |
| Date: | 2012–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:12056&r=soc |
| By: | Wojtek Przepiorka (University of Oxford) |
| Abstract: | Results from two field experiments which were designed to identify possible ethnic discrimination on a German internet auction platform are discussed. A first set of results is produced by a secondary analysis of an earlier experiment. The second experiment additionally tests whether costly signals can help to overcome trust problems between buyers and sellers in online markets. The evidence is rather mixed with respect to ethnic discrimination, and it does not support the signaling hypothesis. |
| Keywords: | Discrimination, Costly signaling, Trust, Online market, Field experiment |
| JEL: | C93 D82 J15 L81 |
| Date: | 2012–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cex:dpaper:2012002&r=soc |